Founder and Managing Director

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 2, 24 March 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

Founder and Managing Director

(Written for THE SUN.)

BORN in the sunshine of Australia, Mr. E. C. Huie, the founder and managing director of THE SUN NEWSPAPERS LIMITED, had the good fortune to come into the world with a sanguine temperament. He had no other special patrimony, and was therefore destined to trust to his own exertions in the future for a livelihood and success. ...... , Fate or perhaps the inherited streak ot Scotsman that lurks within him, sent him early to Dunedin —and hard work. If he did not wrest a great deal of money from that fortress of finance, he certainly acquired a rich store of sound instruction, business sagacity and firm integrity which, in ,time, was to make him the most dynamic rorce in New Zealand journalism. One of the greatest tributes that may be paid to any man in the world of business today is the measure of his fellow-men's respect and confidence, and the extent to which they are ready, in enterprise, to entrust him with the security of their invest ments. In the simple prose of the plain citizen, he is a sound man upon whom the people put their money. It is the acid test of merit. This has been the double experience of Mr. Huie. Twice within a dozen years (and these the most difficult in our island story) he has entered forbidding fields of journalistic monopoly and, on each occasion, has established a metropolitan daily newspaper on he principles and in the features and facts that command success. Here, to-day, and in this form, Auckland las robust proof of the manner and merit of his achievements.

Since he does not look it by at least a decade, it may readily be confidea that the founder oi' THE SUN is fifty years old. But those who know him best as a man difficult to know have become convinced that the real secret of his success is a different virtue and one more worthy of emulation. He keeps his mind till the right moment for frugal speech, and is master of himself. No one has yet seen him flurried or faint-hearted. Indeed, it might be said that “he sees everything under the broad and searching light of day, white and uncoloured, and always vith an unimpassioned eye.” His search, if he has any dis tinctive quest at all, is the real rp 9 pearance and meaning ot things: no palaver, no pretence, a demand for good work all the time, and a constant vitality of effort and interest in life and its affairs. As a thinking reader of history and literature he has learnt that the .lessons of the past are the fruits of the future.

The best to-day, but better still to-morrow: that is his active motto. This, natur ally, makes him a taskmaster to be respected. But he is uot a whip-cracker, and believes that if it be the inalienable right of employers to demand the best

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of service at all times, it is indubitably the duty of every employer to make working conditions agreeable and promotive of keenness and pride in work. His praise is a perfect smile; this, of course, k'-eps staff conceit from running to exuberance. Better still to-morrow. It has been this policy and no other that nas made THE SUN a Mecca not only for working journalists, but also for those with a bent for literature and the urge to become writers. The applications for literary positions on this paper have been more than sufficient to staff all the newspapers in Auckland. It is an outstanding fact, appreciated throughout the Dominion, that the administrators of THE SUN have always paid generously for the encouragement and literary development of New Zealand writers, while many other journals, drowsy with heavy prosperity, frowned on local talent. The pioneer of illustrated daily newspapers in this country, Mr. Huie has also been a journalistic god-father to scores of New Zealand essayists and poets. Thirty-one years ago Mr. Huie entered journalism in Dunedin as a reporter on the “Evening Star,” and passed in due course to the hardest school of journalism in New Zealand —the “Otago Daily Times." In 1906 he became editor of the Christchurch “Evening News,” then an afternoon by-product of “The Press.” After leaving that position, which he had held for six years, he set out on what was

generally condemned derisively as a rash enterprise, doomed to ruinous failure—the founding of THE SUN in Christchurch gainst ..he combined hostility and competition of four daily papers. .he story of the contest is a romance; it may he told here in a few words: To-day THE SUN is the brightest newspaper in the South Island and a solid ally of this journal; the old “Evening News" is a memory; and two of the three others still lick their wounds. When a determined call was made by many representative men in this province for the launching of a new metropolitan daily paper, there was only one man who seemed suitable for the job. Mr. Huie was invited to come north and view the field. Again, candid friends and others less friendly asserted that even to contemplate starting a third daily paper in Auckland was a hopeless adventure. This flood of inspired nonsense \. as allowed to swirl past. Mr. duie accepted the formidable task of establishing THE SUN. There was no difficulty in raising the necessary capital. Auckland investors —representative of the whole community—demonstrated the utmost coniidence in the man who had breached a great monopoly in the South Island. The finalising of the project proved a notable record of constructive work.

A camp has been set in high ground in the very centre of the battlefield in harmony with Auckland’s enterprise. Many heads and hands have helped to build and equip TEE SUN’S splendid publishing house, but the steady, driving force has been a shy, modest, reticent man with a quick orderly mind —Edward Chalme’"' Huie. R. RILEY.